And you know, just to say a little more about that:
We had a GREAT trip. We had a few days there with Luke not feeling 100%, but otherwise we had a GREAT trip. Honestly. Really cannot begin to complain.
But I still came away with a feeling of “something missing” I just can’t quite put my finger on. And I think I just realized what it is.
Because to some degree or another I had to be planning as we went along, I could not be fully immersed in my trip. Planning ahead, as FPP allowed us to do, made it so that I could do all of that planning and obsessing and fitting the pieces together just so, so that once there I could just enjoy the vacation. Preplanning allowed me to be more in the moment. I realized that this trip I didn’t take some photos I meant to take, I didn’t do some things I meant to do (not big things mind you but things I had in my mind). I felt… distracted?
Because I was. In this new way of doing things, I knew we’d use G+ a few times and certainly on those days I was tied to alarms on my watch telling me when the next thing was to be booked, and then keeping track of that next thing, and then booking it - sometimes to the detriment of enjoying the attractions (see my photo of me on Pirates). What we were fortunate to enjoy on our G+ days impacted what our other days would look like. So I had to revise those days along the way too. I was planning through the trip, not just enjoying the trip.
I agree with you there. The planning is the best part and doing it ahead of time gave more of an opportunity to think about it and adjust as things got closer. Now G+ has you make all of the decisions that day and on the fly, not as much fun for my OCD planner brain.
Preplanning will ALWAYS be my preference, even if it means I have to bob and weave a little once there. Because in the current system all I’m doing is bobbing and weaving.
Re preplanning: this is what they constantly got dinged on with the FPP and the 180 days out for dining reservations - that it took too much preplanning. My very first trip, I hated having to choose these rides having no clue what I was doing. It felt like su h a permanent commitment with little flexibility.
So they moved to a Disneyland type system that is more “go with the flow”. I always way preferred Maxpass to FPP so I thought I would love the new system.
Instead we got a glitchy, nightmare version of maxpass that doesnt evev work because they didn’t run enough simulations on how it would work in the WDW parks.
The only drawback to MP was you couldn’t book until you tapped in, making late arrival a serious disadvantage.
I wouldn’t be opposed to booking one ahead and then your next at park opening. This will drive all of the next available times into the late afternoon.
You could also go with booking your first after you tap in. This would give onsite people an advantage and it would slow down distribution in the morning as only people in the parks will be getting LL. Before my December trip Inwould have rooted for this one. But after that trip where we chilled at the hotel while I stacked LL for our arrival.
This was the issue. Not the preplanning. I’m sure of it.
I knew a lot of people that started their vacation planning well inside of that 180 days and they were locked out of a lot as a result. Many people don’t start planning vacations until 3-4 months out.
I think if they went back to it and did the 60 days - or heck, even 30 after final payment is due on packages - it would be far more well received.
On my first trip I was completely caught off gaurd with this. I started palnning in July for a Septemeber trip and assumed I was doing good planning!
The 60 day FPP reservation never worked for me because I stayed offsite, had an unpredictable schedule or a short trip. I suspect locals hated the 60 day.
But I think dining 60 days, and LL 30 days or even one week out would work -leaving the question - does onsite get to book a week plus stay?
There just is no good way to implement a line skip system at WDW as things stand now. In some cases, the rules are objectively bad, but the larger, unavoidable issue is that there just isn’t enough attraction capacity to go around. Disney is trying to shove ten pounds of, uh, potatoes into a five pound sack, and we are the potatoes. It’s a zero-sum game: if I skip the line, everybody in standby has to wait a bit longer. As a result, there are no real solutions, just a different set of tradeoffs.
I liked FP+ well enough because I (a) always stay on-site, (b) book >90 days in advance, and (c) really like planning for Disney trips. There are an awful lot of people not in either (a) or (b), and I’m fairly confident that those of us in (c) are a rather small minority of overall guests. I’m sure FP+ satisfaction was much higher among hyper-planning on-site guests, but does that mean it was a better system? No, it was just a better set of tradeoffs for us. (It also had the benefit of being “free”, which at least made up for a lot of the issues others might have had with it. But we all know Disney isn’t going back to free.)
There is no line skip system that will make everyone happy, and at this point I’m skeptical they can even come up with one that will make most people happy. Personally, if they had one week a year with no LL/FP, that’s when I would go.
This is important, as well as size of party. Getting a 4th FPP for a group of 6-8 people was so hard because our 3rd FPP was usually so late in the day that drops were over and we were trying to get a ride with 6-8 spots available at 4pm or later. Never really clicked for us.
But it seems that Disney are most concerned with keeping their onsite guests happy, especially their premium paying guests. Those are the ones who are expressing their dissatisfaction with the current situation having paid for G+. And that is a cause for concern.
But how did they not know this was going to be bad for on-site customers? Taking away pre booking and throwing a jump ball now to all guests at the exact same time? That was pretty obvious even to the casual guest.
The real question is, other than location, why would you pay the MASSIVE premium for onsite? I personally think it was boardline not worth it when they have all the perks like MDE, free magic bands, free parking, EMH, etc.
